But it’ll be worth it.
Her arms wrap around me, hands playing in the hair at the nape of my neck, and I pull her up, gently, so we’re sitting together on the edge of the bed.
She buries her head in my neck, murmuring against my skin. “Six-game road trips are too long. What if you came back and I was an entirely different person? What then?”
“Are you?” I ask, grinning and running my hands along her shoulder blades before moving to the curve of her waist.
“No. But I could have taken up a new hobby.”
Her fingers tug gently on my hair, and a groan catches in my throat. “Did you?”
“Yes.” I can hear the petulance in her voice. “Rabbit husbandry.”
“Then I guess I’m making room for some rabbits.”
Sloan pulls back, smiling softly with a sleepy shake of her head. “Why’d you come back early? I’m okay without you, you know. I miss you, but I promise I don’t sit here every night watching you on TV, pining for you.”
I do worry about her when I’m gone. That something might hurt her, and I won’t be there. That texts with three facts I love about her won’t be enough from a distance. That it’ll get too much and too big, and she’ll wish she never followed me to Seattle, that she went to school in Toronto like she wanted.
But I know her better than I think I know myself, and I think even from across the entire universe, I’d be able to spot the subtle shifts in her that tell me when she’s lying, and she’s not. “Couldn’t go another day without seeing you in your—” I pull the sheet down to see what she’s wearing before flicking my eyes up. “Raccoon shirt. Sexy.”
Her lips purse and her chin tips up. “Tia got me this.”
“Thank her for me, will you?” I give her a dry grin. “Just couldn’t get the idea of you in this shirt, on my side of the bed out of my head. Had to book the first flight out or I wouldn’t have made it. I dream about you and this raccoon shirt on a constant fucking loop. Thought about getting you some fresh rose petals to, you know, sprinkle them all over the bed before I made love to you in this shirt—”
“Made love to me?” she cuts in, nose wrinkling.
I nod. “Sex, but make it romantic.”
“Make love to me, Bohdan,” she laughs, her voice taking on this stupid, exaggerated breathy quality, and she flops backagainst the pillow, her hair fanning out everywhere before she rolls her head dramatically from side to side.
“Shut up.” I smile, shaking my head, grabbing her chin to stop her before she gets carried away and knocks us both off the bed.
But all it does is show me how her eyes look under an early-morning sky. How her cheeks are soft, still sleepy, her mouth parted just so, and the swell of her chest just under the navy sheet covering her.
I trace my thumb over her lips, pausing in the full pout of the bottom one. She blinks up at me before she takes my hand, interlaces our fingers, and pulls me down towards her, mouth hovering just below mine when she says, “Well, you came all this way.”
It’s one of my favourite times to be with her—early morning, hazy sky, ocean sparkling as the sun rises, her hands all over me when she strips me out of my suit, nails digging into my shoulders when I spend time between her legs.
Mine all over her, angling her hips the way I know she likes when I’m inside her.
Just us while the stars go to sleep.
The only person who matters.
“I can’t imagine not knowing you.” I move my mouth against her collarbone, teeth scraping her skin, marking her even though I don’t have to.
She’s mine and she always will be.
Her fingers paint down my back, probably the most beautiful portrait in the world because it was done by her hands, and she arches into me, hips meeting mine, her words just a whisper in the dark. “And you’ll never have to.”
Bohdan
“Thank you all for joining me.” Talon waves his arm with an unnecessary flourish, gesturing to the balcony of our suite where we’re all spread out, a beer bottled angling from his fingertips a bit too precariously.
“We had no choice.” Tia smiles tightly at the same time Jay nods, one hand tugging on the chain around his neck.
“I was already here when you came out.”
